Workers in the Denver-Aurora-Broomfield area had an average hourly wage of $24.50 in May 2012, about 11 percent above the national average of $22.01, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Regional Commissioner Stanley Suchman noted that, after testing for statistical significance, local wages were significantly higher than their respective national averages in 15 of 22 major occupational groups.

Those groups included management, architecture and engineering, and sales.

Only one group had significantly lower wages than its respective national averages: arts, design, entertainment, sports and media.

Compared with the nationwide distribution, local employment was more highly concentrated in eight of the 22 occupational groups, including business and financial operations, computer and mathematical, and sales.

Conversely, eight groups had employment shares significantly below their national representation. These included production; education, training and library; and transportation and material moving.

The bureau said one occupational group — business and financial operations — was chosen to illustrate the diversity of data available for any of the 22 major occupational categories.

Denver-Aurora-Broomfield had 96,920 jobs in business and financial operations, accounting for 7.9 percent of local area employment, significantly higher than the 4.9 percent share nationally.

The average hourly wage in metro Denver for this group was $34.72,compared with the national wage of $33.44.

With employment of 19,940, accountants and auditors was one of the largest occupations within the business and financial operations group, as were market-research analysts and marketing specialists, at 5,650, and human-resource specialists, at 4,770.

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